


Night Terrors

by cecilantro



Series: 100 Days Of Ficlets [30]
Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-28
Updated: 2018-03-28
Packaged: 2019-04-14 06:37:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14130255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cecilantro/pseuds/cecilantro
Summary: If his fault lines were opalised, Molly suspects he’d be statuesque, somehow more graceful and elegant than he already is, and mostly crystalline.





	Night Terrors

Nobody in Mollymauk’s new party, save Yasha, is truly aware of how deep his cracks run. If his fault lines were opalised, Molly suspects he’d be statuesque, somehow more graceful and elegant than he already is, and mostly crystalline. Streaks of glittering blue-green, lacing around his hands, arms, through his head and horns, would his eyes be taken completely?   
No, none of The Mighty Nein are  _ truly _ aware, and in his worst times, Molly craves Yasha as though she is the light of the day to contrast the night he seems to dwell in. However, they come, individually, close in different aspects.

Jester inherently understands bits and pieces,  _ tiefling problems _ , and not just strangers staring. He’s long since learned to deal with that, it’s far easier to convince himself they’re staring at the elaborate patterns on the gaudy coat, or appreciating the jangling jewellery on his horns, than to consider they’re staring  _ because he has horns _ , because of his tail, it waves behind him, confident, lashing. And Jester knows that bit, not as well as him, but to extents. She also understands the constant need for self-restraint, that slipping into the Infernal tongue to someone who isn’t fluent, and how it can destroy them with the subtle magic that it holds. Between them, Infernal is a rasping, private communication, but to the others, it could be deadly. 

Beau… He isn’t sure what she understands. Perhaps the repercussions of such a personality, albeit on similar and yet different ends of the spectrum wheel, Molly’s generosity and leniency gets him into bother more often than not, and on the flip side, Beau is too strict. On herself, on others, her laid back attitude, he knows a lot of it is a front for the deep care underneath. It doesn’t mean that he likes her. Just that he doesn’t dislike her, and may the Gods help anyone who tries to hurt her, because to take Beau would be to take a part of Molly himself. He looks to her, the first time that thought forms in his mind, scared and surprised at once, but finds no exaggeration to his own words. For Beau, for all of them, he knows he would fight to die.   
And that’s two weeks in.

Nott, admittedly, Molly babies. It’s easy to forget, sometimes, that Nott is an adult in all technicalities. Still, her life experiences are short, as is her life  _ expectancy  _ in comparison even to humans, and all Molly wants to do is  _ help _ , especially since the charmed encounter in Fjord’s room. He’s made a mental note to keep an extra eye out, with the footnote to remember more often that Nott’s personality isn’t always  _ Nott _ as a whole, it isn’t even always honest. She plays up her act, but like Beau, there’s a hidden depth under the projected surface, and Molly knows. His own goals, he may have, but protecting and helping Nott has been added to that list.

Fjord and Caleb can be grouped together in that they know  _ something _ about Molly that only Yasha otherwise does.   
The party, by now, is used to Caleb’s nightmares, his flashbacks, the occasional scream as he sits up and they all stir, ask his name, and then collapse to sleep. Molly has sat, more than once, at Caleb’s side, falling asleep over his chest when he could no longer hold himself up and awake.   
Only Fjord, and Caleb himself, are aware that Mollymauk suffers the nightmares, too.   
Fjord jokes that they’re the bad dreams trio, when they all get a private moment to themselves, without the girls. Molly feels Caleb lace their fingers together, he knows that Fjord is holding his hand on the other side, it’s a part of Caleb that only they get to see. The part where he  _ wants _ the physical contact, a grounding point in the mess of his mind, it’s something that Nott is familiar with but has never considered anything different. Molly and Fjord understand the gravity, with them as strangers to Caleb’s horrors.

 

The first person to catch Molly’s nightmares was Fjord, and he thinks that he did well to hide it from him as long as he did, when they come almost every night.   
The first night in Alfield, after the burning of the town, and everything had piled up on Molly. It had been so much worse, more intense, he’d sat up in bed and half ran, half stumbled to the window to throw up.   
Fjord had been up and at his side in moments, patting his back, gentle, as Molly coughed up the burning remnants of the  _ very _ expensive top-shelf drink. It’d had time to mostly kick in, so he didn’t mind so much, his arms shook at the windowsill with the exhaustion of holding himself up.   
Fjord had sat him down and pulled the bare bones of explanation from him. When he’d gone back to sleep, it was with Fjord curled against his back, the promise of more contact, of cuddles and pats and affection, if Molly should want them, all he had to do was ask. It was an offer that had not, as of yet, expired.

Caleb had been less accidental. Molly had, once again, fallen asleep on him after a nightmare. A combination of Caleb’s bad dreams, and the injuries he had taken for Molly’s lack of attention, he tried so hard to sit vigil but ended up passing out over Caleb’s chest.   
It doesn’t alarm Caleb so much, anymore, he’s grown used to it, and following the attempting mugging, it would have been stranger for Molly  _ not _ to fall asleep on him.   
They had been packing up when Caleb had come to Molly’s side and, gently, tugged at the back of his shirt.   
_ “Is everything okay?” _ Caleb had asked, the rings around Molly’s eyes were red, the bags underneath bruise purple-blue. And Molly had smiled, at first, and denied that there was a problem. It hadn’t taken Caleb long to wriggle the truth from him, Molly’s confession about his nightmares, and Caleb had taken his hand and held it, tight, for a few minutes as they worked. Molly felt safety slip away from him when Caleb had drawn back.

 

And tonight is no different, really. Molly wake up, gasping, he’s done pretending when Fjord is around. In fact, he thinks, Fjord would likely be angrier if Molly  _ didn’t _ wake him after a nightmare.   
It’s a bad one. His hands go to his face and he digs his nails in to feel some kind of pain that isn’t in his head, he doesn’t remember what he was dreaming, he never does, only that it invokes a horrid and all-consuming horror in his head, splitting pain that would be a white blade if he could collect himself long enough to visualise it.   
Fjord is up from his bed and comes toward him, Molly shrinks back, and Fjord stops, mid-step.   
“D’you want me?” He asks, and Molly, though wracked with guilt, shakes his head, the hand clapped over his mouth to muffle sobs jerking, hurting. Fjord lets the half-step fall back.   
“Caleb? D’you want Caleb?”   
Molly nods, hard, manic, and Fjord nods once in return. He seems to dissipate into the shadows, and a few moments later, Molly hears the door close quietly behind him.

He tries, in the quiet, to pull his personality from the wreck of his mind, he has to save  _ something _ , can’t let everything drown and burn at his fingertips when he’s  _ right there _ , watching. He reaches for some semblance of himself, and what he finds, slips uselessly though his fingers. Not like water, not fluid, it leaves no remainder of itself, it’s more like silk sheets, he can grasp for a second but it just slips away. Mist, perhaps, a fog, he likes the idea of himself as a fog.   
The door opens again and Caleb enters first, rubbing his eyes with one hand, but appearing determined, he strides.   
And crawls to Molly across his bed like  _ Caleb _ is the one that needs the comfort, Molly opens his arms for him and Caleb beelines, they entwine and Caleb’s hands on Molly’s back insist that the tiefling matches his breathing pattern to Caleb’s. He slows himself, his lungs fill fuller, harder, he takes time to appreciate the oxygen as it finally becomes sufficient to fuel his brain again. It’s a calm slope from there, Caleb holds his hand all the way from the top of the mountain down to the base, and then some, by the time they’re satisfied, Molly is almost asleep.   
Caleb pulls him a little tighter, tucks him under his chin, Fjord looks over from his own bed, only the glitter of amber eyes in the dark. He sees Caleb smile, weary, to him, and then close his eyes.    
Fjord follows suite.

**Author's Note:**

> i crave approval pls shower me with attention


End file.
